


The Evil Queen Explains

by imaginary_golux



Category: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3206789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Disney Kink prompt 'In the old fairy tales, the evil queens are just the princesses who were never saved.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Evil Queen Explains

Mother told us that if we were beautiful and obedient as doves, as sweet as honey and as yielding as the lily in the field, we would get husbands worth our while; and indeed I cannot say that she was wrong, for is not my sister the queen of her own kingdom, and does not her husband dote upon her as few men do upon their wives?

Mind, I would hate her less if he had not been _my_ lover ere he married her. But she was always apter to our mother’s lessons than I was. Where my lips were cherry-red, hers made the rose to look pale and wan; where my skin was milk, hers was alabaster; and where my hair was ebon dark, hers shone as bright as gold. To be sure, my eyes were green as emeralds, but hers were blue as sapphires; and so our mother used to say she could not choose between us which was the most beautiful. She may have been telling the truth, for all I know. Certainly the prince could choose, and did; and he did not choose me.

I did not kill my sister. I loved her even then, even when she married the prince I ought to have had, even when she bowed her head for a shining crown which ought by rights to have been mine. Anyone who says that I have ever done her harm is lying. But it is true that when she married the prince who had courted me, and who had made no arrangements for me, sent no brother or cousin to give back some fraction of what he had taken from me, I left that kingdom forever, and I do not know if my sister fares well or no. But I had learned my lesson well, you see: it is not enough to be fair and lovely as the dawn, if there is one beside you who outshines you as the sun outshines the moon. Men will always choose the fairer, though they promise otherwise.

I was my husband’s second wife. His first I think he loved, though I never met her; she was lovely, so his people told me, almost as lovely as I was; but that was flattery to one of us, at least, and I discount it entirely. What did I care for her loveliness? She was dead, and I was married at last, and queen at last, as Mother had promised I would be.

Admittedly, I had not used her methods. Having tried them once, and been so sorely rebuked, I turned instead to other means. It is quite astonishing how simple it is to apprentice oneself to a witch, when one is lovely and not lacking in wealth; and the witch I chose was well-known to be the most powerful and cunning in ten days’ travel by swift horse. She was not quite so cunning as I was, but that is only to be expected; it is the way of these things, you see, that either the teacher uses the apprentice or the apprentice conquers the teacher. Witches are rather like bears: you cannot have two in close proximity, for they will fight to the death if they cannot go apart.

Well, I learned her arts, and I took from her crumbling hut the only thing of value she possessed besides her knowledge: that mirror of which so many have heard, which can observe all the world in an instant, and answer any question so long as it rhymes. (A silly restriction; but magic is like that, you see. Capricious.)

A king with a young child, a girl-child at that, and a dead wife, is quite easy to ensnare with a very simple love-potion; and indeed he succumbed to it with such speed that even I, who had brewed it, was rather surprised. But I suppose he was in desperate desire of someone to fill the void which his beloved first wife had left behind, and I was happy enough to do so, at least at first.

If the girl had not been so lovely, I would not have taken so strongly against her. Indeed, had she been a son, I would have been quite content to raise her as my own, as the frequent practice of strong magic does render the user infertile, and so I was hardly able to contribute heirs to my husband’s line. (Not that I ever told him so; that news might even have broken the potion’s spell upon him, so much do kings value their heirs.) And had the girl been plain, I would have been nothing but kind to her, and found her some plain prince to marry when she was of age; for she could never have competed with me for anything worth having.

But she was beautiful. Hair like ebony, and skin like snow, and lips like blood fresh-spilled, and great brown eyes like a doe’s. The common folk claim her mother cast a spell to make her so, but if that is true, it was the only one the woman ever cast, so I suspect it was merely a chance of birth which made the child so surpassing fair. I knew at once when I saw her that she would be the most beautiful woman in three kingdoms when she was grown, and indeed as the years passed she fulfilled all the promise of her youth.

And the people loved her. Her father I could deal with – he was not as I have heard some men are, to look upon his daughter with a lover’s eyes, and to him I was still as fair as in my youth, and the potion still potent in his blood brought him frequently to my bed – but the nobles and the common folk alike doted upon the girl as though she were an angel made flesh. Nothing was too good for her, no present too dear nor labor too hard. She was, it seemed, by nature what my mother tried to make me: sweet as honey, yielding as a flower, and beautiful as the dawn breaking. The people gave to her the honor and the obedience which they owed to me, their queen, by right! It was utterly intolerable.

Perhaps I overreacted, the day the mirror told me she was fairer far than I. Perhaps sending her to her death was…less subtle and more cruel than it need have been. I could have simply banished her. I could have found her a husband in some far-off land and sent her away forever. I could have taken a knife to her unmarred face and made her hideous; not even hideous, but only scarred, and she would never again have challenged me.

But my temper has always been my besetting sin. I sent her to her death. What, can you blame me? The kingdom was mine, my husband dead, my right unassailable; and yet this chit of a girl would have taken it all from me. I let my sister live, let my faithless lover live, but what hold had this girl upon my heart? Why, none at all; and so perhaps I placed upon her all the foulness which my sister’s betrayal had engendered in my heart, but that is only human, surely. It is not as though she had ever made any effort to endear herself to me, but only smiled that mindless smile and laughed like far-off bells, and been beautiful. That was enough for the common folk to love her, but I am not so easily fooled.

Being beautiful and obedient as a dove, sweet as honey and yielding as a flower, is not sufficient in this cruel world. You must be cunning as a serpent, sweet as poison and elusive as a will-o-the-wisp, in order to get anywhere – unless, of course, you are lucky enough to be more beautiful than any other woman around.

But there will always be a more beautiful woman. That’s just the way life is. Someone will always be younger and fairer and more graceful than you are.

Unless you take matter into your own hands, of course. As I did.

I regret nothing.


End file.
